Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Friday, June 13, 2014

Armed fighters believed to be part of the Islamic State in Iraq and
the Levant have seized the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh and freed
hundreds of prisoners, government officials say.

Overnight, hundreds of fighters launched an assault on the provincial
capital Mosul, 350km north of Baghdad, engaging in combat with troops
and police, the officials said on Tuesday.

"The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the
mercy of the militants," an Interior Ministry official told the AFP news
agency, making it the second city to fall to anti-government forces
this year.

Turkish media also reported on Tuesday that 28 Turkish lorry drivers
were taken hostage by ISIL fighters in Mosul, Iraq's second largest
city. In recent days, fighters have launched major operations in Nineveh
and four other provinces, killing scores of people and highlighting both
their long reach and the weakness of Iraq's security forces.

Al Jazeera correspondent Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said:
"the intelligence estimates Iraq has released suggests it's not just
Iraqi fighters. There are foreign fighters who have come to fight for
ISIL."

Mosul is the second city to be captured by rebels this year, after the central government lost control of Fallujah. (Read more.)

Speaking today to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need,
Archbishop Amel Nona said he thought Mosul’s last remaining Christians
had left now a city which until 2003 was home to 35,000 faithful.

The Christians are among 500,000 thought to have fled Mosul, which
was overthrown Tuesday. That event is now followed by news today of
militant attacks on the Iraqi city of Tikrit, 95 miles north of the
capital Baghdad.

Describing reports of attacks to four churches and a monastery in
Mosul, the archbishop, 46, said: “We received threats… [and] now all the
faithful have fled the city. I wonder if they will ever return there.”

The archbishop, who in the ensuing crisis sought sanctuary in Tal
Kayf, a village two miles from Mosul, described how the local community
was doing its best to provide for crowds of people flooding out of the
city and into the surrounding Nineveh plains, where there are a number
of ancient Christian villages.

“Up at 5am yesterday [Tuesday, 10th June] morning we welcomed
families on the run and we have tried to find accommodation in schools,
classrooms and empty houses.”
He said: “We have never seen anything like this – a large city such as Mosul attacked and in chaos.”

He said that in the 11 years following the 2003 US-led overthrow of
Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein, Christians in Mosul had declined from
35,000 to 3,000 and that “now there is probably no one left.”

The archbishop said the attacks on Mosul began last Thursday
(5th June) but were initially confined to the western part of the city.

He said: “The army began bombing the affected areas but later in the
night between Monday and Tuesday, suddenly the armed forces and the
police left Mosul, leaving it to the mercy of the attackers.”

The archbishop questioned reports claiming the militants responsible
for the attacks are part of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS),
a terrorist organisation linked to Al-Qaeda and in control of key areas
of northwest Syria.

He said: “I do not know yet who the group is behind these attacks.
Some speak of ISIS, others think other groups are responsible.

“We have to wait until we have a better understanding of the
situation. What we do know is that they are extremists; many people have
seen them patrolling the streets.”

BBC reports have described ISIS ambitions to create an Islamist
caliphate spreading from northern Iraq across to northwest Syria. From ISIS-controlled regions in Syria have come reports of Christians being asked to pay the Islamic Jaziya tax and pressure to convert to Islam. Many thousands of Christians have fled the region. (Read more.)

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